The Golden Keel, by Desmond Bagley

Bibliography, Desmond Bagley

Desmond Bagley

Desmond Bagley

Read more about Desmond Bagley on the next Bagley page!

Desmond Bagley is one of England's almost forgotten thriller writers. A great thriller writer, actually, The Golden Keel was his debut novel, and a book that really got him noticed. It is said to The Golden Keel, by Desmond Bagleyhave been based on a true story, in the sense that it was a story overheard by Bagley in a bar in Johannesburg. The story is about Mussolini's vast personal riches and the men who went looking for it. It was published in 1963 to great acclaim and followed by a further fifteen popular adventure novels.

The main character is Peter Halloran, a migrant to South Africa after the end of World War II, who has established himself in a successful and profitable designer and builder of yachts and small watercraft. Life is good – business is good, and he has a beautiful wife and daughter.

Then, one day, in the local yacht club bar, he meets Walter, an alcoholic ex-soldier, who tells him an improbable tale of a hidden treasure. When Walter was a prisoner of war in Fascist Italy, he managed to escape with a small band of Allied prisoners and waged a guerilla campaign for several months in the hills of Liguria against the Nazi Germans. Towards the end of the war, their band ambushed a truck convoy, which contained a massive treasure in gold bars, jewels and even the State Crown of Ethiopia.

Rather than turn the treasure over to the authorities, they hid the trucks in an abandoned mine and sealed the entrance. Now that the war is over, the treasure is for the claiming, provided that they can think of some way to smuggle it past Italian customs.

Halloran thinks little of the tale until several years later, when life has turned sour. His wife and daughter having been killed in a traffic accident, he finds that he needs a change in life. A chance re-encounter with Walker leads to a meeting with Coertze, and with the three men agreeing to a partnership to recover the treasure. Walker and Coertze know where it is, and Halloran has the perfect solution to getting it out of the country.

There is a lot of Alastair Maclean to the novel. The storyline is very down to earth - no James Bond heroics - and Bagley makes the story move at a brisk pace. The book features the usual fights, gunfire, violence and love interest you'd expect. The Golden Keel is also tightly written, plausible, interesting, and has an intelligent ending. A nice read by an author that does not deserve to be forgotten.

High Citadel, by Desmond Bagley

A plane is forced down in the Andes. The survivors - a pilot, two businessmen, High Citadel, by Desmond Bagleyan ex-president, his bodyguard and his niece, a school teacher, and two academics - are forced to battle altitude sickness, freezing temperatures, and a band of Communist guerillas.

And as they try to organize their effort to improve their situation, we start to find out that the people involved are not what they say they are. Each has their own past. And, in addition, it soon becomes evident that the survivors have a traitor in their midst.

They manage to get down to a mining camp. There another bad surprise awaits them. What follows is tense, tightly scripted action. The party of survivors gets holed up on one side of a gorge, trying their best to holding off attackers with limited weapons and ammunition and a homemade crossbow. Their hopes rest on a small number who have volunteered to climb the other side of the mountain looking for help.

Every character in High Citadel plays an important role. The action is very tense, and the suspense is present all the time. This is one of Bagley's best books, well written, exciting and a great read. It is highly recommended for all thriller fans.


Wyatt's Hurricane, by Desmond Bagley

This is another excellently written, fast paced thriller by the deceased English grandWyatt's Hurricane, by Desmond Bagley master of thriller writing, Desmond Bagley. This time it is about a ferocious hurricane and a scientist who has a sixth sense about such things.

Hurricane Mabel lays hundreds of miles off the coast of San Fernandez (Haiti). All the weather forecasting computer models predict she will pass harmlessly by. However, Dr David Wyatt, a civilian weather expert, does not believe so. His sixth sense tells him that she will change course and hit the already poverty-stricken country head on. He knows that thousands of lives are at stake. But his attempts to prevent the disaster fail. The US Navy is not convinced, and neither is San Fernandez's brutal dictator Serrurier. His concern is much more with crushing the rebels challenging his rule.

This is truly a great book – with wonderful dialogue, descriptions of the hurricane so vivid that you feel you experience it, and very interesting characters. The plot is elegant and nicely laid out, and the pace of the book is very brisk. A true page turner!

Landslide, by Desmond Bagley

This book is set in the late 1960's, and based around a fictional back water town in British Columbia. A geologist, Bob Boyd, who works in British Columbia timber country, has no memory of his past following Landslide, by Desmond Bagley a terrible accident, which only he survived. Now he has been hired by the powerful Matterson Corporation to survey land before they build a great new dam. Almost by accident he begins to uncover the shaky foundations of the Matterson family, who controls a logging empire, and becomes a fly in their ointment.

Matters are already complicated, and get even more complicated when he falls in love with Claire Trinavant, the last link to a forgotten family whose name strikes a mysteriously resonant chord.

Landslide is another great read by English thriller master Desmond Bagley. The main character is very interesting and well drawn by Bagley. And as the tale progresses, Bagley masterfully builds suspense up to a great, action filled and somewhat surprising ending.

The Vivero Letter, by Desmond Bagley

The Vivero Letter is an extremely fast paced The Vivero Letter, by Desmond Bagleythriller by Desmond Bagley that was turned into a great movie with the same name. All of the characters are believable, and the descriptions of the locations are so vivid that they place you firmly into the middle of the action.

Jeremy Wheale's very well-ordered life is suddenly torn apart when his brother is murdered by a mob hit man, whose bait was a family heirloom - a sixteenth-century gold tray. The trail takes Wheale from Devon to Mexico and the wild tropical rain forests of Yucatan.

In dense jungle, he helps two archaeologists locate the rest of a fabled hoard of gold – a treasure from Uaxuanoc, the centuries-old lost city of the Mayas. But his brother's enemies, the Mafia, are hot on Wheale's trail, and with them are the Chicleros, a vicious band of convict mercenaries. And Wheale is in a difficult spot where it seems nobody can be trusted – perhaps not even his two archeologist friends?

The Vivero Letter is a truly extraordinary adventure tale that will make you bite your nails!


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